The Playmaker (29 page)

Tower Hill is a grim and barren knob, ornamented only by the gallows' table and block, all set upon a wooden platform somewhat smaller than the stage at Burbage's Theater. This was a stage of a different sort, though with much the same purpose: to amuse and instruct the public. I was here because I had to be, and Starling because I asked her. God seemed to decree it as well, for a drop in the temperature and a light fall of snow convinced the Company to cancel that day's performance, leaving me free. Executions were never my choice of amusement, even as a boy in Alford, but my fears could not be put to rest until this man was dead, and I had to see it done.

We stood on the nether side of the gallows, well back, where the crowd did not press in so closely. When the drums began, a steady rumbling that filled us like water, I felt Starling's hand steal into mine. Her hand felt warm this bitter day.

Executions have their own gloomy pageantry, but still I wish more dignity might attend them. A stirring passed through the assembly as we waited; heads turned and a cry went up from the Tower gate, where a cart containing the condemned man had emerged. A band of miscreants accompanied it, shiftless boys not so far from the gallows themselves, who jeered and made obscene signs and threw dirt clods until constables pushed them aside with their pikes. The crowd pressed together and blocked my view
of the cart. “Can you see? Can you see?” Starling asked, while I shook my head impatiently. The noise increased until it packed solid all around us, then quickly died away as a short, springy gentleman bounced up the five steps to the platform. He wore a few pieces of ceremonial armor, sported two plumes in his helmet, and carried a scroll under his arm. When all was quiet, he unrolled the document and proceeded to read the charges against the prisoner.

Everyone knew them by now. “Father Martin” had confessed to forming the Holy Restoration Society, a crew of fanatics dedicated to placing a Catholic successor on the throne after our Queen's death. Philip Shackleford, Lord Hurleigh, was their chief candidate, being kin to Elizabeth, a covert Catholic, and open to their schemes. If the Queen took too long to die, Master Feather confessed he would have hastened her end by poison or some convenient disease. But divine providence had intervened instead, striking down Hurleigh in the prime of life. This dealt a severe blow to the Society, but did not kill it. Certain conspirators were still in communication with the courts of Spain and France, and there was evidence that their recruitment continued. The Society's downfall was rumored to be the work of an informer.

We heard the court's version of all this, which stated that Martin Feather, Esquire, stood guilty before God and men of high crimes against his Queen and countrymen, and was therefore justly condemned. More followed, but Starling and I were not well placed to hear it. When he came to an end of the charges,
our official rolled up his paper and stepped to one corner of the platform.

The prisoner then came forth, dressed in the black robe of the Jesuit order. At the sight of him the crowd blazed up again. At this distance he looked shorter than when I had seen him only a few weeks before. His time on the rack had bent his back cruelly, but even so there seemed less of him than suffering alone might account for. He turned to the main body of the crowd, away from us, and began his speech before their jeers had ceased. This quickly silenced them, for everyone desires to hear the last words of a famous criminal. The moment his voice reached me, I knew something was wrong.

“Come,” I said to Starling, and still holding hands we worked our way among the throng. Master Feather's last words departed from the usual form of execution address: rather than express sorrow for his sins and appeal to heaven for mercy, he assured us that his conscience was clear and God would so judge him. Brave words, but misguided, and the people were not taking kindly to them. Angry mutters were beginning when I at last pulled up before the platform, not ten yards from the condemned man. I looked directly into his face and a little cry escaped me. “Richard,” Star whispered, staring too. “Richard!”

This was not Martin Feather. Or at least, he was not the man I knew as Martin Feather.

He concluded his speech, turned abruptly to the executioner. Drummers began a swift, steady beat as the customary exchange
passed between them. From the executioner: Do you forgive me for the act I am bound to perform? From the condemned man: I do. A black bandage tied about the eyes, and a cry went up around us: “Long live our Queen!” “God bless Elizabeth!” Calmly, the prisoner knelt and placed his head upon the block. The drums rolled, louder and faster, the shouts rose in a kind of ecstasy as the heads-man's axe made a swoop in the air. The first blow mercifully severed the spine; thus the traitor was beyond knowing when the second struck off his head.

I turned abruptly and pushed through the crowd, Starling close behind. “Who—?” she began, but I shook my head with a look that cut her question short.

We plodded toward East Cheap as a roar went up behind us— a cry of approval at the display of the traitor's head. A few paces before us a boy about my age stumped along on a wooden crutch, his left leg bent at the knee and bound up with linen. We caught up with him easily, and in passing I happened to look his way. Something in his sullen glance made me turn and stare.

I knew this boy, even though his rosy face looked thinner and paler now, and the eagerness had dimmed from the eyes I had last seen peering over Master Feather's copy desk. “You once worked for him, didn't you? Samuel?”

Sullenness flashed to terror on his face. “They've already questioned me. I know nothing about it. Leave me alone.”

“But I saw you at his chambers. Did he dismiss you?”

He looked down resentfully. It was then I noticed that his right
hand was bound up, resting in a sling. “This hand dismissed me. And I know who crippled it—the one who took my place as scrivener.”

“Do you mean you were disabled on purpose?”

“It was not meant to look that way.” The boy had no use for me, but like most people when they are wronged, he burned to tell about it. “I was going home one night after dark, when a band of three or four ruffians rolled me over in the street. One of them was the fellow who took my place. I would swear to it.”

“But how could you know that, in the dark?”

“Because I pulled out a hank of his hair with my left hand before he knocked me down and stamped on my right. And later, while my hand was being bound up, I was still holding it. His hair was sooted black, but under the black it's bright red—red as new copper. The very next day he had taken my job. I saw him there after I was dismissed. But I lost my proof.”

A strange tale, this; street brawlers were not generally qualified to take over scrivener's duties. But Master Feather's last scrivener was clearly something other than a scribe.

“Do you need a position?” Starling asked, her voice betraying pity.

“I have a position,” he growled. “I sell ballads at St. Paul's for a hack printer. His next work will be about the just end of my late master, whose shoes he isn't fit to clean—” The boy broke off, suddenly remembering that Martin Feather's was a most dangerous name to praise. He drew back into himself and let us walk
ahead. By the pinched looks of him, the ballad-monger he worked for now was not nearly so generous as the late attorney.

So the true Martin Feather was truly dead, but that left the false one—the tall gentleman who bore himself like a king and threatened like a highwayman. Plus his redheaded henchman, Bartlemy, who apparently did more than threaten.

“Set in the attorney's chambers as a spy,” Starling decided as we tried to make sense of it later that day. “By the gentleman of the purple plume, no doubt.”

“To what end?” I asked. “Who are they working for?”

“Why, the Queen, we must hope, else England is in a sorry state with two rival bands of conspirators. They are rough players, whatever side they may be on, to trample that poor boy's hand all because they wanted him out of the way.”

Rough players indeed, who had threatened me with drowning, and I did not wish to believe they were the eyes and hands of our most gracious Queen. But that was not what troubled me most. “Master Beecham—or Beauchamp—is still unaccounted for.”

“Aye,” she said, frowning. “He is the piece that doesn't fit.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at it: here is Martin Feather, Matthew Merry, your aunt, and who knows else in the plot, all either dead or fled. On the other side are the man with the purple ostrich plume and his lad, Bartlemy.”

“We know not what ‘side' they are on.”

“Whatever it is, they must not be part of the Holy Restoration
Society, or Bartlemy would have been taken. But Peter/John seems to have his own plot going. He has been wanted by the Queen's agents since July, but still manages to elude them. He has been closely associated with Martin Feather, but warned you against the man twice. And that's another thing: his particular interest in you.”

This was not “another thing.” It was
the
thing, as far as I was concerned. The death of Master Feather, sad as it was for him, had settled nothing for me. I was still waiting for John Beecham to call in his “debt,” and the apprehension of it hung over me like a headsman's axe. Yet what did I owe him? A shilling, a job on the docks, a firm push along the chain of events that led me into the theater—what was all that worth?

“You haven't heard any more from him, have you?” Starling asked, with a searching look.

I shook my head. The less she knew about this aspect of the plot, the better for her.

Three weeks passed with no word from Beecham and no Yeomen of the Guard come to arrest me for conspiracy. The heaviness in me lifted, though only a little. Our performances were fewer and the audience diminishing; on some days the groundlings even brought their own wood to build little fires in the pit. Late in November we performed Part One of
Henry VI,
my first play. I had come a long way from the ignorant lad who had to be cued by a kick in the shins; now I could cue myself and elbow my way in for a look at the plot with
the best of them. As if in tribute to my progress, my old friend Zachary appeared amongst the hired players. It was the first time our paths had crossed since Lord Hurleigh's funeral in July.

“And what a stew that gentleman cooked for himself, eh?” Zachary remarked to me. We were perched on the edge of the tiring-room loft, moments before the performance was to begin, while members of the Company rushed to and fro below us. I was shivering under my cloak, but weather seemed to have no effect on my companion. “Just as well for him to die when he did, or he'd never have got that pretty funeral we gave him. Which reminds me, lad. Something came of that I've been meaning to tell thee.”

“What is it?”

“What's it worth to you?” he countered.

I was low on coin, as always, but then remembered the chunk of gingerbread Starling had given me. I took it out of a fold in my cloak and broke it in half.

After making short work of it, Zachary went on. “You disappeared that day, recall? No sooner had we left the Abbey than you ducked out of your robe so fast it was still standing. Next minute a gentleman showed himself and demanded of me who you were, how I knew you, and other nosing queries of that kind.”

“What did you tell him?” I asked, more than curious.

“That I knew not thy name, nor thy place, nor thine honorable kin. That I met thee on the street only the day before and broke with thee over the mourner's job and made a penny off thee withal—meaning my recruitment fee, mind, and not any other
money that might have passed between us. Of that which I told him, part was true and part less so, and no business of mine which he believed.”

“Did he give his name or office?”

“Nay, lad, but as he was flanked by Yeomen Guards I guessed he served the Queen, somehow.”

“Did he have bright red hair?” I asked quickly. Zachary shook his head. “Then, was he a tall man with a good build, a dark beard, and eyes that seem to look through you?”

Zachary's jaw dropped almost to his chest and his eyes rounded to shilling size. “Saints defend us, thou hast the long sight!” So saying, he performed various complicated signs over me intended to ward off mystic powers. I had to smile, though the news was not comforting. So the counterfeit Martin Feather was an agent of the Queen, as Starling surmised. He could easily have stationed himself amongst the mourners without my noticing him, or perhaps even donned a black robe and carried an ash pot—though my sense was that the deep-hooded robe had shrouded Bartlemy.

“So,” I said. “He got little out of you. How did he take it?”

“With right poor grace. He took my slate with all the names on it. Though it was little use to him, I warrant.”

I agreed silently, wondering what a time they must have had with Ned Cut-Nose and Flat-Faced Francis. The third trumpet sounded and the players began assembling below. I stood up carefully, set aside the cloak, and adjusted the folds of my gown. “I
am obliged to you, Zachary. It's late news, but worth knowing. You won't pass it on, will you?”

“What do I know to pass on?” He held up one fist with the thumb bent out. After a moment I caught on to the gesture and crooked my thumb around his to show that we were agreed. “And you are not obliged to me, little brother,” he added, with a sweet smile. We climbed down to join the opening scene—a funeral, as it happened—and I did not understand what his last statement meant until the performance was over and Zachary long gone: he had taken the other half of my gingerbread.

Early in December the Company closed the Theater to make ready for the season at Whitehall, a great undertaking. To my surprise I was included. Robin was at great pains to impress on me what an honor this was. We would perform five plays throughout the fortnight, presenting each to the servants during the day and to the court at night:
The Merchant of Venice, King John,
and three others. There was some disagreement over
The Winter's Tale,
but Master Will prevailed on the “nay” side, claiming he wished to revise it.